Transportation is a critical element in the smooth and efficient operation of almost every aspect of today's cities and urban areas. As a result, many types of transportation systems have been developed to move people and cargo from one place to another more efficiently. The most prominent transportation systems are automobiles and trucks, both operating on public highways. Public buses utilize the same highway network, as do, to some extent, cable cars and electric buses. Subways, monorails, and trains, however, utilize a rail network that is typically less developed than the surrounding highway networks. Other forms of inter-city transportation, such as the bicycle, boat, and so forth, are less prominent.
Transportation systems can be evaluated on key factors such as energy efficiency, maximum capacity, capital equipment and construction costs, land usage, environmental costs, maintenance costs, and convenience to the user. While the more important of these factors from a global perspective must be cumulative environmental and energy costs, all too often the individual user identifies convenience as his most important factor. Consequently, while the automobile has significant environmental and efficiency drawbacks, it is overwhelmingly the most convenient transportation system in that it allows the automobile user to leave when he desires and to travel to any desired destination along any of several routes as fast as legally possible, potentially without interruption. Even many negative aspects associated with use of the automobile, such as traffic, pollution, the stress of driving, insurance costs, fuel costs, automotive maintenance and purchase costs, driving risks, and the like, do not outweigh the inconveniences associated with other forms of transportation. As a result, the automobile and highway network remain the most prominent transportation system in modern society.
Much attention has recently been focused on carpooling, or the sharing of one vehicle for several people who have the same destination or origin. While carpooling is a partial solution to some of the problems associated with the automobile, the most significant drawback with carpooling is that each person in a carpool must be ready to depart at a particular time. This limits the flexibility of the carpool system and the freedom of the carpool participants, and consequently reduces the number of carpool participants.
Public buses also utilize the highway network, but are far less popular than automobiles. Buses are less favored than automobiles because one must often wait at a bus stop for a relatively long period of time and in potentially disagreeable weather. Further, buses are generally restricted to particular routes, and consequently a bus rider must walk, or acquire other transportation, to and from bus stops along various routes proximate to his origination and destination. Frequently, transfers must be made from one bus to another due to inadequate routes, and frequent interim stops must be made to load or unload other passengers. Still further, buses are subject to many of the same drawbacks as the automobile, such as traffic, stop lights, and traffic risk. As a result, buses are not as popular as the automobile even though, when properly utilized, buses are more efficient and less environmentally harmful than the cumulative effect of so many individual automobiles.
Rail-guided vehicles, such as trains, monorails, and subways, are an alternative transportation system found in many cities and urban areas. When properly utilized, such systems are more energy efficient than automobiles and less environmentally damaging. However, many of the same drawbacks exist for rail guided vehicles as for busses. For example, railguided vehicle users are dependent upon predetermined and often inadequate schedules, a limited number of fixed routes, and lost time due to stops at intermediate stations for other passengers. Even the relatively high speeds attained by rail-guided vehicles do not fully compensate for the time lost in other ways when using such transportation systems.
Consequently, cities and urban areas have been plagued by the problems associated with having private automobiles as the primary mode of civilian transportation. A person will readily spend hours in heavy traffic either because there is no alternative, or because any available alternatives require more time and inconvenience. Moreover, the pollution created by millions of private automobiles is having an unmeasurable effect on the environment and quality of civilian life, not only in urban areas but in the surrounding rural areas as well. The cumulative energy wasted at stop lights and in traffic is considerable, and causes a direct increase in fuel costs and other costs associated with automotive transportation. The energy required to accelerate an automobile that weighs several thousand pounds is frequently converted into little more than friction within the automobile's braking system at the next traffic light. This is a considerable amount of wasted energy since the average human occupant in a typical automobile represents a mere 5% of the gross vehicle weight. Still further, dependence upon extremely large amounts of fossil fuels to power a large automotive transportation system makes such a society somewhat vulnerable to the whims of those who posses fossil fuel reserves.
Clearly, then, there is a need for a civilian transportation system that is able to compete with the automobile in terms of convenience to the user, but does not require the tremendous energy consumption of an automotive transportation system. Further, such an improved transportation system should provide increased safety expectations, less overall cost to the user, and profitability to those manufacturing, owning, operating such a system. The present invention fulfills these needs and provides further related advantages.